An old tweet from 2020 by Dutch speedster Paul van Meekeren about bringing food for survival has gone popular on social media. Van Meekeren had commented on a post regarding the T20 World Cup 2020 being delayed due to the Covid-19 outbreak. He had urged readers to “keep smiling” in the face of hardship.
The right-arm fast bowler helped the Netherlands defeat South Africa by 38 runs on Tuesday in Dharamshala by taking two key wickets. These were the wickets of vice-captain Aiden Markram as well as all-rounder Marco Jansen. This was both their first victory in ODIs over a Test-playing nation and South Africa’s first ODI loss to a non-Test-playing nation.
Among South Africa’s top batters in the competition has been Markram. In the eleventh over, van Meekeren clean-bowled the batter for just one run with a deadly cross-seamer. Because of his skill with the bat, Jansen was planning to take it easy when batting at 9. However, the Dutch pacer’s skittish delivery also sent his stumps flying.
“I need some income” : Paul van Meekeren in 2020
Due to a lack of funding, players on the Netherlands squad sometimes worked other jobs in addition to their cricket. The same holds true for a large number of other non-playing nations, such as the USA and Oman.
His tweet was written at a time during which he had been fired from Somerset and a back issue that had been misdiagnosed had caused him to fail to play more games in the previous year. He said, “I had enough savings but they’re savings that I don’t want to touch. But I’ve dipped so deep into my reserves now that I had to think about what I was going to do this winter, because there isn’t going to be any cricket. I need some income.”
Fans react to Paul van Meekeren’s rise from delivery boy to ODI World Cup 2023 star:
Paul van Meekeren, who took two crucial wickets for Netherlands in the historic win against South Africa, worked as delivery guy during T20 World Cup 2020.
Cricket has better plans for you ? pic.twitter.com/6ismLpW6iZ
— CricTracker (@Cricketracker) October 17, 2023
Another day another upset
— Dr Crickter (@drcrickter) October 17, 2023
"That's some serious bowler dedication right there! Talk about delivering on and off the field. Congrats to Paul! Cricket saw his potential before anyone else. #CricketLife"
— Anas Chudhary (@anas_chudharyy) October 17, 2023
Great victory for Netherland
— Dr Crickter (@drcrickter) October 17, 2023
Time changes. ?
— Ashok Rajpurohit (@ashok_apna_AK) October 17, 2023
Congratulations Netherlands
— arsalan qureshi (@arsalan59424751) October 17, 2023
This made me cry ?? but happy for him.
— RR KumAR (@RRKumAR83624641) October 17, 2023
Netherlands work hard and play like team to achieve this great victory … Against one of the contender of WC 23
— Hriday Singh (@hridaysingh16) October 17, 2023
He's the most underrated bowler in the Netherlands side ?
— Tanveer Hassan (@tanveercric56_) October 17, 2023
Wow dedication level????
— Bolo Yaarrrr (@ShaRo45264) October 17, 2023
CAPTAIN SCOTT EDWARDS…!!!
Well played ?— GORDXROHIT (@gordxrohit) October 17, 2023
